In the ghost story, a boy will vanish.

As the story spreads and is repeated, first by those who searched for the boy and then by their neighbors, and then by neighbors of the neighbors, the circumstances will change. The boy will disappear from the forest, from a pharmacy, from the front steps of his house. He will have been playing unsupervised; he will have been holding his mother’s hand moments earlier.

Some things will not change, or at least, in no way that is substantial to the ghost story.

The boy will vanish in winter. His footprints in the snow will lead search parties away from the town and into the trees.

It will be a Sunday morning. The neighbors will cling to this fact above all others: question why the boy and his mother were not in church. They will mention this again, with knowing glances, later in the ghost story.

The boy will not be found. Or at least not in a manner which satisfies the ghost story.

The boy’s name will be Henry, Percy, or Dylan.

Once the alarm is raised, and it becomes apparent that Henry/Percy/Dylan has not simply wandered off (as young boys do), search parties will form. Most will be directed by the sheriff and mayor. They will comb through the wilderness surrounding the town in orderly lines, calling Henry/Percy/Dylan’s name.

The town’s children will also search. They will traipse through the old playground; visit treehouses  long abandoned to black widows. They will hunt through their parents’ basements, attics, and closets. They will discover vintage Playboy magazines, barely-worn work boots, and unlocked gun safes.

The children will find the first clue: a Nike/Adidas/Chuck Taylor sneaker, half submerged in the town’s single creek. Police dogs, followed by cadaver dogs, will sniff through the surrounding forest. Neighbors will walk up and down the banks. There will be talk of divers, but the creek is shallow, more ice and gravel than water. Divers will not be needed.

The search will continue for five days. More articles of clothing will be found: a blue sweater with the right sleeve ripped away; a second Nike/Adidas/Chuck Taylor sneaker. On the third day, blood will be found at the foot of a pine. And a tooth will be unearthed. And then another.

And then another.

DNA testing will prove inconclusive.

As the search continues, men will become lost in the woods. They will claim that the trees began to change, to grow and contort into impossible shapes. Each will say that they found themselves in a vine-wrapped clearing. And they will remember that, in the center of the glade, they saw a pillar of blackest stone, so dark—they will say—it was as if a starless night had dripped down and calcified into rock.

When these men find their way back, they will swear that it took days to escape the forest. Though, in the ghost story, they will have only been missing for a matter of hours. They will hyperventilate as they speak, grasp Styrofoam cups in shaking hands.

“The pillar reached up past the trees,” they will say. “Past the sky itself. It grew down too. Oh, yes. Into the earth.” They will pause, struggling against their own words and memories. “Its roots squirmed like rats’ tails across our boots.”

The men will maintain, despite questioning from friends, spouses, and detectives, that they were perfectly sober. That they know these woods like the hands of their wives, and that they have never seen the clearing before.

Of course, in the ghost story, no such place will ever be found.

Dogs too will act strangely in the forest: clawing at trees and rocks, charging into thickets with rage in their eyes and foam on their teeth. One dog will, without warning, attack its handler. The officer will require eighteen stitches in his right hand and forearm. He will ultimately lose his ring/index finger/thumb. He will not rejoin the search.

There are three endings to the ghost story. Any of them could be true.

In the first ending, a man will claim to have seen the boy in a clearing that cannot exist. Black roots grew into his ears and nose, through the gaps that were his eyes. The would-be-rescuer will say that he heard Henry/Percy/Dylan calling out for help but when he approached, the boy began to laugh. The man will say that it was not the Henry/Percy/Dylan laughing, but rather the bloody flowers sprouting through his lips.

In this ending the search will eventually be called off. Police will ignore the impossible accounts; dismiss them as tweaker fantasies or the last attempts at infamy from a dying southern town. The TV crews will leave, the reporters will move on to other towns with other missing boys.

Slowly, perhaps unconsciously, this town will gather cans of gasoline. Neighbors will stare at their calendars; mark the days till summer and its droughts. Then, with matches in hand, they will turn to their windows and look at the forest.

“Has it always been so close?”

In the second ending, the boy will return. He will reappear barefoot on the front steps of his mother’s house. At  first, she and the town will celebrate. The TV crews will leave, the reporters will move on to other towns. But then the neighbors will notice—each morning—a boy’s footprints leading to their windows. Some will claim to find muddy tracks leading to their beds, to their children’s beds. Though, in the ghost story, this will never be confirmed.

  The mother will venture into town less and less. When she  does, she will ask if anyone has seen Henry/Percy/Dylan. She will say—again and again—how her boy went missing all those weeks ago. The neighbors will remind her, not unkindly, that her son is safe. That he is at home. The mother will only shake her head.   

Then she will stop leaving the house. Some of the neighbors will recall, with knowing glances, how she and Henry/Percy/Dylan never went to church.

In this ending, the mother and the boy will be glimpsed each night through their dining room window. They will stand there, unmoving and unblinking, until the sun rises and sends shadows like black roots, writhing across their skin. 

In the third ending, the children will find Henry/Percy/Dylan. Or rather they will find his blood in the basement of an uncle/family friend/beloved teacher. Testing will be conducted and unlike the evidence in the woods, DNA will match this to the missing boy.

The uncle/family friend/beloved teacher will be arrested but released soon after. He will never be charged. It’s only blood, after all. No body will be found. The TV crews will leave, the reporters will move on to other towns with other missing boys.

In this ending the ghost story will not truly be a ghost story.

But the mother will remember. Every night she will sit on her porch and stare into the forest. She will call to its impossible clearings and black roots, beckoning them closer, towards the town that consumed her son.